op-ed

Shorter Pamela Bone: feminists are such cowardly hypocrites for being against FGM and rape in war whenever any culture does it instead of just specially castigating Islamic societies where such brutalities occur. I posted over at Hoyden About Town a few days ago with more background to Bone’s article about how she bravely spoiled a […]

Last week’s Feminism Friday post was on why Rape Jokes Just Aren’t Funny, based on a series from Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, and at the crosspost on Hoyden About Town Bernice made a telling comment. Humour – the final frontier of colonialisation. You really now you’ve co-opted someone into the frame of dominance from which […]

Obviously, a lot of women feel uncomfortable about rape jokes because rape is an ever-present background threat to daily life for us, not just a bit of regrettable “bad sex”. Melissa McEwan at Shakesville has written quite a lot about how rape jokes bolster rape culture, and posted an excellent essay on the subject of […]

Although it has long since become a household phrase, the origins of the term “sexism” are not widely known. In researching this article, I found that the term is most commonly dated to the 1968 paper “Freedom for Movement Girls – Now”, however there are actually two other known appearances of this word prior to […]

Not everyone who disrupts a thread with questions that derail rather than further discussion means to be disruptive, but most feminist blogs soon learn that many disruptive posters are simply throwing anti-feminist monkey wrenches around: they have no genuine interest in substantive debate, they just want to bury the forum in sidetracks because the discusssions […]

Where do you point a male feminist ally (whose alliance up until now has been based on largely unexamined egalitarian impulses, but who hasn’t read any theory) to find good introductory analysis of gendered dominance in sexual behaviours, and how attitudes towards and about sexual behaviours play back into gender relations more widely? Some of […]

Rational people often assume that some opinions and judgements are so obviously part of their worldview that they really don’t need to be said. Unfortunately, some maliciously disruptive people take delight in assuming that if something has not been clearly stated then they are safe in assuming the worst of others, even when such assumptions […]

As usual, not all of these posts have actually been tagged as Feminism Friday articles by their authors, but if a post appears to fit into the category I include it. Please add any other online articles you think fit the bill from the last few weeks in comments. Amanda Marcotte is out of the […]

This is a republication of a post originally published at the author’s blog that I had linked to in the FAQs. That blog is no longer a general readership blog, but the author has given permission to repost this article here. Author: Ilyka Damen He came home from the store this afternoon and asked, “So, […]

I was reading something over at Pharyngula today where PZ Myers was alerting his commentors to brace for an influx of creationist debaters following a particular story getting picked up by both Digg and Reddit, and he reminded them of his 3-comment rule for dealing with newbie debating opponents. Don’t attack without mercy until they’ve […]